Bacon Ice Cream and Rosemary Coffee

Sometimes there are things that sound terrible, but end up being really amazing. Bacon ice cream. Grapefruit IPA. Lavender Mochas. Deep-fried Mars Bars.

I think it’s important to note: these things didn’t just randomly appear. For every chai latte or beer can chicken, there were probably dozens, hundreds, thousands of failures.

For example: my friend John Johnson turned me on to both Hario grinders and the Aeropress. After a while, I realized that I could experiment with flavoring my own coffee quickly and easily by mixing extra elements in with the grounds, then infusing them with the coffee.

But I didn’t want hazelnut coffee, or vanilla; I wanted to see if I could come up with something interesting.

Rosemary coffee to me, is absolutely terrible. So is oregano coffee. And thyme coffee, even though I love thyme. There are better things than garlic coffee. Nutmeg is pretty good. Perhaps the best thing I’ve done is put citrus peels – either oranges, tangerines or lemons – in with grounds; zest is particularly effective. Writing that, I realized I have yet to practice with different liquids than water. What about…tea coffee? Milk coffee? BEER COFFEE???

I guess my thinking, today, is that if you don’t try something you’ll never know what the result might be. Sometimes, the barrier to trial is incredibly low, but people don’t go for it, and sometimes they don’t even think about it. We may as well experiment, though, where we can, because the next big thing could be…well, beer coffee. Excuse me a minute, I’m going to put the kettle on.